


Berlin

by historiologies



Series: hinterlands [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Childhood Friends AU, F/M, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, not a sequel but a companion, pray for my soul in trying to finish this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 14:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16518236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiologies/pseuds/historiologies
Summary: It’s the summer before twelfth grade, and Wonwoo thinks, from today, that it will never be the same.A companion story toLove Story of a Boy.





	Berlin

**Author's Note:**

> Jesus, another WIP? Well unfortunately that is what you're going to get. But rest assured, you know how committed I am to writing this. I can't do Wonwoo dirty and leave all of you hating him after the events of LSOAB.
> 
> Hopefully I will be able to do Wonwoo's side of the story justice. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey, even if it's a tedious one.
> 
> The title and original characters are inspired by (slightly tweaked, as well) Sam Isaac's ["Berlin"](https://samisaac.bandcamp.com/track/berlin), which is a beautiful song that you should absolutely listen to.

It’s quiet in the woods.

This late in the summer, the cicadas are particularly worked up, and Wonwoo has to shake and slap and scratch at his legs because the blades of grass keep slicing at his ankles, slick and rain-kissed and making them itch and sore, even as the wheels of his bicycle cut narrow paths through them.

He’s alone today, by choice. Jihoon was out of town, Junhui was watching his younger brother, and Soonyoung was spending a rare weekday off with his mother. Still, he’d asked Wonwoo if he wanted company, and Wonwoo’d gritted his teeth and told him that he’d stay in and catch up with his reading. Soonyoung had nodded, smiled at him, even teased him a little.

_You and your books. Don’t get too lost in them._

Don’t get too lost in them (that I can’t find you.)

Wonwoo pedals harder.

He gets to the clearing quicker than he expected. He brakes abruptly, inertia causing him to spill onto the grass, but it’s a gentle surface and he doesn’t bruise much. He lies on his back, the afternoon sun beating against his skin, breath coming out in shallow pants, idly thinking about how proud his science teacher would be of him, remembering that it’s inertia that caused him to fall and not gravity.

Stupid thoughts, but he thinks them nonetheless.

He’s annoyed because his fingers itch with the need to reach out and clasp something, preferably something soft and warm and feeling like Soonyoung. He clenches his fists, instead, and turns to his side and curls up, well-aware that his cotton shirt is soaking up the damper parts of the dirt underneath his body and that a small stone is digging into his upper thigh.

He inhales, shakes his head, lying to an audience of no one, and lies there until the sun sinks well over the river.

It’s the summer before twelfth grade, and Wonwoo thinks, from today, that it will never be the same.

—-

Wonwoo gets the e-mail on August the 25th, 2013.

He’s just made his first coffee of the day in the kitchen of the flat that he shares with several other people--it’s black, no cream, no sugar. They’re not very fancy when it comes to coffee in Berlin. Straightforward, no fuss, pragmatic. It’s something that he’s come to appreciate in the past few months he’d decided to make Germany his home base for awhile.

He hears the alert on his phone, but he doesn’t pay it any attention, too focused on the way the dark liquid dripped, almost sinuously, into the pot.

_Did you brew any more, Will?_

_Mmmm,_ Wonwoo answers, drowsy with sleep still. Around him, Kathleen shoves two slices of bread into the toaster on the counter, waits for them to brown.

 _You look like shit,_ she tells him, unceremoniously, a brief glance spared as she rummages through the refrigerator for some butter.

 _Fuck you too, Kath,_ Wonwoo retorts without any venom. She laughs, and the toaster dings.

Wonwoo closes his eyes and bites back a tiny smile, remembers how he used to eat his toast with sugar. He’s almost sure that if he’d told Kathleen about it, that she would find it ridiculous. She wouldn’t understand, but Wonwoo knows she wouldn’t. It’s this and countless of other differences that continue to amuse him, to remind him of why he’s here.

And why he doesn’t want to go back.

(It’s what he tells himself.)

 _What time’s Ira getting in?_ Wonwoo hears Kathleen pull out one of the chairs in their tiny kitchen. It’s a nice place, white cupboards and wooden table, with little touches that are more Home and Garden than IKEA, but that’s mostly the girls. He and Ira, the other guy he shares that flat with besides Kathleen and another girl, Andrea, mostly leave them to their own devices when it comes to decorating, even though they wrinkle their noses in jest at their flea market finds.

Still, Wonwoo’s coffee table book full of his photographs sits at the center of their kitchen table, on an adorable little easel that Andrea had found at one of the sales. William Jeon, it says, in bold minimalistic print across the cover.

He thinks Jihoon would have died laughing at it. Fucking William, he would have said, before laughing his razor sharp little cackles of delight. Something in his chest twinges at the thought of his old friend.

It’s been so long since he’d thought of him.

Wonwoo shakes it off and shrugs, opens his eyes. Everything’s fuzzy because he doesn’t have his glasses on. He remembers the question hanging in the air. _Um. About ten, maybe? I think._

He answers her in stilted German, so she smiles, taking pity on him and switching to English. _You should practice more if you want to stay here any longer._

Wonwoo gives her a grin. _Later, after my coffee._

_What time are you leaving for your signing, then?_

_It’s after lunch, so I’ll probably just miss him. The train leaves at fifteen past ten._

The coffee machine finally whirs to a stop, and he pulls the pot out gratefully, pours it into his mug, a plain black one with a crudely drawn star on it. Whenever people ask him about it, he just says he likes it.

He doesn’t mention it reminding him of anyone.

_Want one?_

Wonwoo looks up, looks at the piece of toast Kathleen is offering him. Even without his glasses, he can see her big green eyes and her bright red hair, pulled back into a tight ponytail at the top of her head so that most of it spills around her shoulders like volcano lava. She is a friend, a good friend; she works at a gallery in Kreuzberg, and when she found out during an exhibition of his photos that he was thinking of staying a year in Berlin and working with a well-established portraiture studio for a change, she’d invited him to share an apartment with her and her other roommates.

 _No thanks,_ he says, smiling at her. He takes a sip of his coffee, grimacing as the piping hot liquid sears down his throat. _I’ll just grab a sandwich before I go to the bookstore._

She flutters her eyelashes at him, coy. _Are you meeting Kirk there?_

How awkward, Wonwoo thinks. He clears his throat, before downing the rest of his coffee, turning to the kitchen sink to wash it out. _About that…_

Kathleen sighs. _Already, Will?_

 _It just didn’t work out,_ Wonwoo says, trying not to sound defensive. He doesn’t want to think about how going out with Kirk, or Gerald, or Belinda, or Tai, or the countless people Kathleen hasn’t even heard of in the years since he’s left Korea never ‘worked out’. He puts the mug back, but his gaze lingers at the stupidly drawn star in front of it.

He looks up, and he knows Kathleen has seen him. Her eyes are soft, and Wonwoo wants to escape, the weight of her sympathy dragging his shoulders down. _I’ll go get changed,_ he mutters under his breath, turning to leave Kathleen to finish her breakfast by herself.

 _You should think about why,_ she says out loud, just before he enters his room.

He shuts the door in response, tamping down the frissons of embarrassment that wind its way around his lungs and tighten and pull at his breath whenever anyone makes an observation about how hard it is for him to settle down. Ira’s ace, Andrea’s gay, and he and Kathleen are both bi, so their apartment has had its fair share of walks of shame, but in the few months they’ve been his flatmates, they’ve often teased him about how he never stuck to the same partner for more than a few weeks.

Nothing wrong with it, they say, but being a commitment-phobe will get harder the older he gets, and he’s already the oldest among them in his mid-thirties and Wonwoo knows they mean well but it’s not that simple.

Histories never are, and he has plenty of them.

His phone is in his pocket, a beat up Samsung Galaxy with barely enough juice to latch onto their apartment Wi-Fi, but he still feels when it vibrates against his thigh. Right. E-mail. He’s expecting an important one containing the details of his new assignment in France next month--an eccentric rich older lady who was going to have her estate featured in a top French landscape architecture magazine and who’d insisted she’d only do it if William Jeon took the pictures. For the fee they were offering, he was happy to accept--he’d be able to send money back to Korea.

(Back home, he catches himself thinking, before he corrects himself.)

He pulls up his phone, eyebrows knitting together in confusion when he sees the sender.

 _Jeon Bohyuk_ , he murmurs to himself. Concerns blooms in his chest. Bohyuk doesn’t usually reach out to him outside of each other’s birthdays. The hangul that greets him when he pulls up the message weakens his knees.

_Wonwoo-hyung, you need to come home. It’s dad._

**Author's Note:**

> twt: @historiologies


End file.
